Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 04, 2009 @01:52AM
from the sequel-to-formula-409 dept.

CCP Games, the developer behind space MMORPG EVE Online, made waves in August when they announced DUST 514, a console MMOFPS which will tie into the EVE universe. Eurogamer is now running a preview of the new MMO, providing more information on how it will work and the way in which it will interact with EVE and its players. Quoting: "... battles take place on dynamic battlefields about 5 kilometers across. Unlike EVE itself, there will be a cap to the number of players per battle — CCP is 'still playing with numbers' (and presumably watching the development of 256-player MAG with interest), but assures us that this will not be less than 64 players. There will be a command structure, with infantry and squadron leaders on each side led by a player-commander on board the hulking Mobile Command Center airship. The commander will effectively be playing a real-time strategy game with living units, and will have an RTS-style view of the battlefield. He'll be dependent on the situational awareness of infantry players to clear the fog of war. He'll also be the target, with the ultimate aim of a battle — after several, varying sub-objectives — being to destroy the opposing side's MCC."

Like with any other online multiplayer game. Savage 2 had some learning curve, but I actually liked the game mechanics and there really wasn't any asshole players but everyone played nicely. New players of course, but people weren't harsh to them either. However the initial learning curve probably had something to do with it too, but its a fun game.

Sounds kind of like C&C mixed with Battlefield:2142. This could be interesting, although, when directing people instead of bots, you have to take up a leadership role, which, quite frankly, is difficult for a lot of people. Guild/Clan leaders should be looking at this game to showcase their abilities. I foresee large scale clan battles in the future.

I am really saddened that it's taken people this long to realize this was a KICK ASS Idea.

Disclaimer: Everything said below this runs under the assumption the game is made correctly. There are LOTS of ways they could mess this up, interface, command structure, how to reward playstyles, how the teaming is done, etc etc.

But IF they get this right, it will be a fantastic game. Some people love strategy, others love killing shit. Some people like both, but more often some people like one and hate the other.

I am really saddened that it's taken people this long to realize this was a KICK ASS Idea.

Disclaimer: Everything said below this runs under the assumption the game is made correctly. There are LOTS of ways they could mess this up, interface, command structure, how to reward playstyles, how the teaming is done, etc etc.

But IF they get this right, it will be a fantastic game. Some people love strategy, others love killing shit. Some people like both, but more often some people like one and hate the other. Lots of people love having some voice in the sky doing the thinking for them so they can focus on killing shit, as long as that voice helps them kill shit better.

This is demonstrated on a LOT of big multiplayer games with voice enabled, you end up getting 1-5 guys out of dozens who are barking out useful info, the rest feeding off them without much complaint. I think there are better system sthan the everyone can talk to everyone method, but it hink it's a good start.

This has been done before, the human side in Natural Selection [wikipedia.org] had this years ago. One guy on the team was a commander with an overhead RTS view, everyone else played as a standard FPS. The commander could drop items, place buildings (but the FPS players had to actually construct them), and give orders.

My experience was that if you had a good commander, the overall game was good. If you had a shit commander, which was often, then the game was pretty bad. The problem is the ratios. You can't have everyone being the commander. What often happened was that one guy was voted in to become the commander because he was good, but then nobody else got to practice the commander role, so it was very self-reinforcing. The first few times you play commander suck a lot, everyone swears at you while you try to figure out which button does what. A lot of people never really got to play the commander at all, because they'd be kicked from the role within seconds, so they never got any practice.

I played this game at the top tiers of league play, and I can tell you that it had of the most brutal learning curve of all FPSes I've ever played. It's the reason the game never caught on, it couldn't retain new players because pub strats were not logically linked to pro strats, causing stagnation.

The game style has a lot of potential. Hopefully this will be good, as well as Natural Selection 2 (coming soon), and widen our gaming horizons.

Nothing is more frustrating (for a player and a commander) than to see a team disintegrate simply because half of the team wants run around and shoot things rather than work together to accomplish a goal.

If you can get past the somewhat dated graphics, it is indeed a really awesome game. I actually played it back when it was a commercial product, and only returned to it a few years ago when I discovered that it lives on in open-sourced reincarnation. You should definitely try it; the community is small but very welcoming of newbies, and the gameplay is a *lot* of fun.

So instead you have 1 commander and 2 lieutenants. The 2 lieutenants can be put in charge of secondary objectives and routing information for the commander. That way they get some commander exp, but they can't completely mess up a campaign.

They seem to have this base covered- there's talk of having player-versus-NPC battles as part of the new player experience, which would give everyone a chance to get to grips with the game without being steam-rolled by a clan veteran.

Having small groups of newbs taking part in small-scale, easy-rated NPC battles seems like a good way of letting people get the feel for commanding (and getting the feel of foot-soldiering too) without pissing people off and getting a terrible reputation. Especially considering

My experience was that if you had a good commander, the overall game was good. If you had a shit commander, which was often, then the game was pretty bad. The problem is the ratios. You can't have everyone being the commander. What often happened was that one guy was voted in to become the commander because he was good, but then nobody else got to practice the commander role, so it was very self-reinforcing.

That was something what Tribes 2 tried to solve by giving everyone a CC (Command Center) view. Every player could see where others went and what they were doing. What were team assets status and so on. You could even remotely observe other player without being a observer.

The problem was that people did not understand that T2 was not about what role you played on the team, but that every player did everything.

Best teams were those where players could do everything and work together all the problems. Everyone

I'll be psyched up to try this if they get it out on a PC at all, which I am doubtful of. I think the pub server area will be a mess just like games like allegiance, savage, natural selection, battlefield, etc...

This is solved somewhat when you step into the 'eve' area of the game. What will be interesting here is effectively forcing players to form rank and structure. This is somewhat what shadowbane did with PVP and it worked well.. in that game if you wanted to go farther you HAD TO join a guild. It shou

Another game that featured this idea to an extent is/was Allegiance. Teams of players (20 or more per side wasn't uncommon) with one commander for each team. The individual players flew ships (not much like the EVE ships; it's space-based combat flight sim with dogfighting and minefields and such) and would attempt to carry out tasks (hopefully) as the team needed them. The commander meanwhile spent his or her time in a top-down view of explored space, ordering NPC miners or mobile repair carriers, purchasi

While I agree with you that Ender's game: The game, would be a good idea, I think this game isn't any closer to reaching that point than many other similar games. The one that immediately comes to my mind is BF2142, but I know others have been done.
Also, Orson Scott Card has used other 'games' in his novels that would be very cool video game ideas. But I think most of his game ideas are pretty impossible to fulfill in our time, which might be what he was aiming for to make his sci-fi universes.

Besides Natural Selection (as mentioned below here), there's also a game called 'Savage' (made by S2 Games), which can be downloaded for free since the release of the sequel, Savage 2.
Savage has this RTS element for both sides (beasts vs. humans), and is an awesome game.
I don't know if S1 still has any multiplayer servers at the moment, but if not, if you're into these kind of games, Savage 2 can be bought for a tenner or something (and you'd support an indy studio with it).

Man, this reminds me of Planetside. Anybody remember that game? I got it free at Gen Con one year, and I stopped playing after running around for about 3 hours and getting killed by things I couldn't see. How is that MMOFPS doing, these days.

They just merged the last couple servers together, so they're down to 1 server now, but I've read population is still pretty decent. They probably still have around 10-20k active subs, with maybe 1500-2000 people on at prime time. Planetside just missed the mark. The combat was fun when it was remotely balanced, and even then you could still have a lot of fun. Vehicles rocked. Weapons and armor rocked. BFRs were probably where I lost interest. Or was it it the cave expansion... Like I said, they just missed

In the Halo sense? Halo's aliens are bipeds with a social/religious system. I'm sure they're a lot different than the races in EVE Online, but Halo's hardly a good example to use as a comparison to Natural Selection.

As a player of EVE Online who really likes the game but isn't that interested in the battling aspect, I have high hopes for this interesting concept. Particularly, I hope that the MMOFPS integrates with the existing game world through the market. I play primarily industrial efforts in the current game and would enjoy another vector of marketing strategies to pursue to further fatten my wallet.

Also, I think it will be cool to play the FPS as a genre diversion where I can potentially continue to forward my in-game goals from a totally different perspective. All-in-all, as an existing EVE player, I'm definitely looking forward to this game!

As a player of EVE Online who really likes the game but isn't that interested in the battling aspect, I have high hopes for this interesting concept. Particularly, I hope that the MMOFPS integrates with the existing game world through the market.

Me too. One could imagine a whole secondary market for small arms manufacturing that FPS players could pay ship players ISK they earn from their missions.

So depending on who is selling, it depends on what small arms you can buy for your missions.

Yep, and EVE itself is the same - CCCP listen too much to hardcore gamers who constitute a tiny percentage of the gaming market and don't cater enough to casuals that bring in the lion share of the revenue for any MMO. Thus they have less money to spend developing the game and everyone looses, including the hardcore players. You can hope that they have realied this fundamental mistake by now, but I would not my breath.

If CCP spend their time listening to casual gamers EVE would likely be thrown in the large pile of failed MMOs. EVE thrives because if fulfills a niche that no other game provides for myself and a few hundred thousand other gamers - I've never played an MMO where combat against other players can be as complex and fun as EVE's. If CCP spent its time listening to casual gamers there would be very little loss, the market would no longer be player-controlled, and it would be possible to obtain every ship withou

I would like to second this. If Dust goes casual, there are already 8 copies of this game in existence or in the works. I mean, most notably as the article said, it is battlefield 2142 titan mode. What new gameplay will dust offer me casually? A game just as good as battlefield when i have a decent commander, and a crappy game when you have a crappy commander. There are plenty of sci fi shooters out there, bf2142, global agenda, planetside, halo etc. It'll just be another FPS with vehicles and get lost in a

This game will be a spark for many arguments. I've heard dozens of arguments about how to defeat a boss in wow, even though there is usually only one correct way to defeat him. Now people will have to take opinionated orders from a player leader while they attack the other team, and it might be interesting if they can choose to defy those orders.

Why should CCP "handle" it? The situation you describe is the very essence of player-generated content. Think of the RP intensity of being a Dust merc clan betrayed in this way... wanting to find out who caused this, and getting revenge on them and the treacherous commander. That sounds pretty awesome in fact. I would guess that CCP would "handle" the situation by publiscising it, as it would be a fantastic advertisment for what differentiates Dust from Halo 4/5/6.

Incidentally there will be a strong incentive for MCCs not to do what you have described, because once they've done it, they will likely never get to command anyone again. So it would only happen when the stakes are really high...

Why would people think this would be a problem more than it is in the space ship game called EVE? It's not like the mercs you hire will be randomly selected, they'll be part of a corp that has built up reputation through countless battles.

I wasn't suggesting that they "handle" it in the sense that they would rule against it. I was wondering how they would address it politically. CCP has said quite a bit in the past about how this sort of thing is possible, and how trying to police the world against such activity can actually be counter-productive in many ways. I was just pondering precisely how they would address it. For example, would there be a drop in standings? Would some kind of world-specific CONCORD-like police force (MPs? Comman

This sounds very much like the Titan Assault mode in Battlefield 2142. After playing as commander a few times in that game I came to feel strangely like I had the least power to affect the outcome of anyone - being a squad leader or member in a squad that worked together and communicated well seemed much more effective in determining the outcome of a round. As commander essentially all you could do was initiate satellite tracks and dispatch UAVs, drop supplies and the occasional orbital strike, and use a large menu to attempt to give orders to the squads on your team. The problem is that nobody is under any obligation to actually follow through on those orders, and the small point rewards that squad members would receive for following orders seemed to be outweighed by the lure of "going where the kills are". The best experiences are to be had on servers where following squad leader and commander orders are mandatory or kick. If DUST 514 is going to be fun to play from a commander's perspective I would hope that the rewards or punishments for following/not following orders would be increased, or that the command structure can in some way be enforced.

The corp/alliance structure will really help with this I think. From the article, it sounds like as a merc you'll be hired personally. So yes, you might get hired to lead a random bunch of morons who won't do anything you say. OR you get hired along with the rest of your corp/alliance to beat up on the members of another corp.

In the second case, if the grunts you are commanding don't follow orders, kick them out the corp. Put black marks by their names. Tell everyone how much they suck. Refuse to c

Have you played Battlefield 2's mod called "Project Reality"? It gets developed by some ex-soldiers (might be still be serving) and they have got very nice touch to game and... reality to it;)

Commander is not weak at all. And same thing goes for squad leader. Without squad leader, normal players are nothing. And without squads, the whole team loose because commander can not help all teams at all.

But it follows one key function as in real world. The squad leaders are more important than platoon leaders or h

Seriously, if they're talking about 64 players on a console for this thing then DICE needs to finally step it up with BF3 (which they BETTER be developing right now... yeah, quit reading this and get back to work!) and have 128 player support at the very least!

After their review of Darkfall Online, which also happened to be the first time I heard of them, I'll never read or give a shit about a review by them. The chief editor for Eurogamer sided with the reviewer when called out by not only Tasos [darkfallonline.com], lead 'PR' person for Darkfall who claimed to have server logs showing the guy hadn't even played the game, but hundreds of eurogamer readers and even more Darkfall players who almost unanimously agreed it was impossible for the guy to have played the game and still wri

Interesting series of links. I have been watching darkfall but after reading the forums a bit and investigating around on the web about it, decided to give it a year or two and come back. Anyway, it may be worth noting that while that first review is trash, the second one has what seems to be a much more fair and balanced view of the game.

It gave it a 4 of 10, but rather then mocking the game, presented a more factual oriented review, and when moving to opinions, was very clear it was a personal preference

The second 'review' was not even a legitimate review, almost the entirety of it was apologizing/explaining away the first review. The first one was almost entirely made up, the second one was just a poor covering their asses sham.

Problem you'll have here with 'reviews', is that this game isn't actually on the market yet. The only time when people have seen it, and some people have played it, has been at the Eve Fanfest this last weekend.

So all impressions and review points come from CCP's own presentations and the battles shown during the fanfest.

Oh really? I think a simple alt-tab would do better, without paying for a console. If you can't/don't want to do that, get a second monitor and run both games windowed. Problem solved for under 100$ or free if you already have 2 monitors.

A console is not even equipped for decent FPS games. Nothing beats the accuracy of a good gaming mouse, and even if you buy some cheap-ass mouse you'll still be more accurate then a little thumbstick.

While EVE (even few instances of it) can indeed be comfortably alt-tabbed, this "MMOFPS" will be probably quite gfx demanding, requiring quite powerful machine to comfortably run both (notice I didn't say "cheapest", I said "cheapest comfortable"), so it might even out.

Regarding mouse - you do realise that current gen consoles have USB ports? It's only up to the devs to enable using mouse. Also, it seems they want to make this FPS very "tactical", team-based. I would hope they realise that doesn't include t

you can connect a mouse, yes. Then you can go look for a surface to put it on. Consoles are nearly always hooked up to TV's, so it often won't work.

Other then that, pc games have something called an options menu. It lets you choose resolution and how much details you want to see.

As a last resort, there is of course the possibility of a small upgrade, with graphics cards these days being good enough for a low price. 50$ should get a good enough graphics card. Eve just doesn't require much.

I know there is a little debate going on here on console vs fps, but I just want to throw in here, for me personally, FPS is meant for a mouse and keyboard. I own consoles and play them as frequently as my PC, but I save the sports/action/racing games for the console, and leave the strat and FPS games for the PC. Still, it is just what you like, I know some people could headshot me with easily with a joystick and no autoaim vs my mouse and keyboard. We are geezer gamers:)

- playing an FPS on a console is like playing the clarinet with your anus,- playing an FPS on a console is like masturbating in a straitjacket,- playing an FPS on a console is like watching the dungeons and dragons movie...